


Fog

by spinsters_grave



Series: Voltron Angst Week 2k17 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Please read this it's short and worth your time, there's not much else to tag like i said it's short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 15:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsters_grave/pseuds/spinsters_grave
Summary: Thanks for reading! Here's an accompanying video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVjr4mii3cEIt's an incredible example of cliff failure, and is what Lance was imagining happening, except under his feet.@geewillikers thanks again for beta-reading and being a great author!Comments and kudos are appreciated! Find this on Tumblr here: https://reaadmydumbfanfiction.tumblr.com/post/159723854383/fog





	Fog

The breeze ruffled Lance's hair. It was friendly. Lance watched it dance in the air and jump at the waves. He sat on a cliff's edge, watching the waves spray against the rock and try to splash his feet. His bare toes wiggled, relishing the clean air flowing between them.

 

Lance studied the water below him. Most of it was covered in fog, rolling in from the early morning.

 

Coastal fog, sometimes called  _ haar, _ was heavily influenced by, if not made of, sea spray and salt crystals. Under intense pressure, seaweed released an iodine that also influenced the condensation of water vapor. Those were all the properties that made up sea fog, though Lance didn't know if aliens even had seaweed that released iodine. He didn’t know if it mattered.

 

The fog was close enough to touch. Lance knew he couldn't, since it was air, but he still felt like he could.

 

He reached out one hand lazily and thrust it out into the cloud, expecting it to dissipate around his hand. He was only slightly shocked when the thin gray tendrils curled around his hand and kept creeping up his arm.

 

Lance drew back his hand gently. The fog didn't seem to mind.

 

A body sat down next to him, sitting criss-cross without letting her legs dangle over the side of the cliff. Pidge was a little bit of a coward. It was only a, oh, twenty foot drop. And it didn't seem like the waves would crash up suddenly and drag them down into the sea. Lance sat on a dead cliff, where green things grew. Vegetation didn't grow on a cliff that was constantly battered by water—a living cliff. Live cliffs didn’t have any vegetation growing on them—a gross irony. Oxymoron. Juxtaposition. 

 

"Penny for your thoughts?" Pidge asked. She leaned over her lap and tried not to let the fog touch her.

 

Lance stared dispassionately out onto the ocean. "We're probably going to die out here."

 

His breath caught in his throat. Lance hadn't let himself say that out loud before, not to his friends. Not to himself. It might have been true, but it wasn't helpful.

 

Pidge didn't say anything, so Lance pressed on. He had to fill the horrible silence. "I don't—It's just, how many times have we thought...? When we were separated, in that wormhole, I know I thought. Right before we sent Zarkon to his deathbed. Hell, I thought I was going to die when Allura fired on us, remember? Our first day out here?"

 

Lance sighed and twirled a finger through the fog. "We're playing a losing game. We can't take on a ten thousand year old empire by  _ ourselves.  _ We're just kids."

 

Pidge curled up, bringing her knees to her chest. All she said was, "Yeah."

 

Lance stared out into the fog like it might hold some answers. It didn't. Because fog was just sea spray and salt crystals thrown up by wave action.

 

Well, it might have been on Earth, but the fog was different out here. It was thicker, more visceral, and didn't dissipate when you touched it. Lance brought his finger up to his face, a small wisp of fog still wrapped around it. It was soft. 

 

"It's pretty," Pidge said. She was looking out at the sea, too. Lance couldn't read her thoughts. Her face.

 

The wind suddenly picked up, and ran its fingers through Pidge's hair. Lance could feel it fluffing his own hair as well.

 

Lance noticed Pidge had left her glasses wherever she came from. Her eyes looked smaller, farther apart.

 

"Yeah," Lance said. "It reminds me of home, only..."

 

"Alien?" Pidge asked, her eyebrows lifting almost to her hairline.

 

"Yeah. Nothing like southern California, you know, with the coastal fog in the morning. This fog's got nothing on Manhattan Beach, on Varadero-" Lance paused. "The sea's not even blue," he said. Correction- “Gray.”

 

"Water can be different colors back on Earth," Pidge said thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure there's green water."

 

"This water is too pure to be different colors back on Earth," Lance said, his voice muffled by the wind. "It would be gray since it’s reflecting the fog."

 

Pidge hummed noncommittally. 

 

A wave flickered against the side of the cliff and stung at Lance's bare feet. It looked and felt like fire. "This ocean is more acidic," he muttered. "It wouldn't be like this back on Earth."

 

"Okay, you've made your point," Pidge said, her jaw working awkwardly as it rested on her knees. "Alien water is different from Earth water."

 

"Alien fog," Lance corrected. For an example, he stuck out his arm and let the tendrils creep greedily over his skin. "Alien water, too. Alien cliffs. Alien planets. Alien ecology. We don't know  _ so much, _ Pidge. There's whole worlds out there with crazy different plants and ecological systems and water, even."

 

Lance stood up, caught in the moment. He was on the very cliff's edge, and for a moment his heart thudded in his chest as he imagined the cliff face shearing away.

 

There weren’t any words to describe the feeling of being an alien. That was the work of a poet, and Lance had always had an analytical mind. His were words of science and data. To describe the sense of wrongness, of not being in the right place, was out of his realm.

 

"We can't even begin to discover it," he said, not sure if he was talking to Pidge or to the fog. "All we have is what we see."

 

Sea spray and salt crystals brushed against his nose, and Lance's breath caught in his throat. "And all I see is the fog."

  
END

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Here's an accompanying video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVjr4mii3cE   
> It's an incredible example of cliff failure, and is what Lance was imagining happening, except under his feet. 
> 
> @geewillikers thanks again for beta-reading and being a great author! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated! Find this on Tumblr here: https://reaadmydumbfanfiction.tumblr.com/post/159723854383/fog


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